thoughts (and links) of a retired "social scientist" as he tries to make sense of the world.....

what you get here

This is not a blog which expresses instant opinions on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers as jumping-off points for some reflections about our social endeavours.

So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Death in Paris

The
death by gunshot of one innocent is murder – of 130 a massacre - regardless of
where it takes place…it could have been any of us in those cafes and halls of
Paris……And anger was my first response – at the preachers of hatred in the
mosques dotted around the cities of Europe. I felt sympathy for those who would
lock them all up……

But
then I found myself asking why I seemed to have had a different response to 130
innocent deaths in places such as Afghanistan and Syria. More
than a hundred innocent deaths every day - from American, British, French and
Russian missiles in these two countries and so many thousands in Iraq and
Libya not so long ago….. I can, of course, blame the corporate media since we
view the world through its’ lenses and they simply don’t rate such “incidents”
or deaths from “accidental” or “friendly” fire. In that respect, we use the
same defence mechanism as so many Germans in Hitler’s time who screened
unpleasant or unacceptable “truths” from their consciousness……

True,
more than a million British people marched against the Iraq war a decade ago –
and some foresaw the radicalization that would come from Western
“interventions”.

Even
George Bush Senior has spoken openly (at last) about his son’s stupidity in
letting his advisers take America (and many in the West) to war……

The attack on the Twin
Towers certainly provided the opportunity for the security interests in leading
States (adrift after the collapse of communism) to regroup and increase their
budgets and power. "Counter-terrorism” became the slogan behind which the
State increased various surveillance and control measures over its own citizens.
Defence (aggression) budgets and actions boomed; powers of detention without
legal redress were increased; a generation of young muslims radicalised; and
cultural tensions increased.
But the 2011 attack was by no means the only significant event over the decade.
Arguably, indeed, governments and media have used the threat of terrorism to
distract us all from vastly greater threats to our security and social harmony
which have developed as neo-liberalism has grown apace and threatened to
destroy the democratic model which was so painfully constructed in the 20th
century.

Earlier
that day I had read of the death of one of France’s last remaining
intellectuals - Andre
Glucksmann who was apparently the
guy who had suggested to Sarkozy the appointment as Foreign Minister of
socialist Bernard Kouchner (warning – the link’s writer is a
self-avowed neo-Con) although Kouchner
typified a Blairite “moral activism” - and it is his legacy which looks to have
come back like a boomerang to hit France…......France – despite its hostility to
the American line on Iraq – has turned out to be more hawkish in Syria…..where
even the UK hesitates….A French book published only last week questioned this......That led me onto
another assessment – by Adam
Gopnik of the New Yorker

… when asked to distill
Glucksmann’s contribution to French thought, his friend and younger writer the writer
Pascal Bruckner said that it was to put an end to any romance about Communism,
but, more important, to reset the tuning of French understanding: he made it
clear that building a more ideal world was a less important task than mending
the evil in this one.“I cannot tell you what to
be for. But I know what to be against,” was one of Glucksmann’s favorite
locutions. It was hard to know how to make a better world. But it was easy to
see what was making a horrible one. Designing the ideal order was impossible
work. Saving the victims from those engaged in designing ideal orders was not,
in truth, as hard as our laziness let us pretend it was.

I
suddenly remembered Albert Camus’ 5 letters to a German friend in
the book Resistance, Rebellion and Death (1960) which made a big impact on me at
University……Written originally in 1943/44 the letters offer a powerful argument against the
nihilism of those who practice violence – or rather

“I have never believed in the power of truth
itself – but it is at least worth knowing that, when expressed forcefully,
truth wins out over falsehood”

His
third letter contains an important message for those of now contemplating Fortress
Europe –

You say “Europe” but you
think in terms of potential soldiers, granaries, industries brought to heel,
intelligence under control…you cannot keep yourself from thinking of a cohort
of docile nations led by a lordly Germany …....

for
us Europe is a home of the spirit….Don’t worry I shall not fall back on the argument of Christian tradition….that is something you
have talked of too much….Europe has another tradition…my tradition, that of a
few great individuals and of an inexhaustible mass….two aristocracies - that of
the intelligence and that of courage

It is
difficult to imagine these days such a dialogue (however imaginary) between a
Frenchman and a representative of ISIS and, if it did, the Frenchman would not
be expressing philosophical confidence but rather anger and bewilderment….

We need cool
heads these days - our elites (British, French or American) have become too
polarised in their attitudes...........and seem incapable of exploring Middle
East issues(in all their admittedly fiendish complexity)in a balanced way. We need Fred Halliday
back amongst us…..some of his thoughts on terrorism here

About Me

Can be contacted at bakuron2003@yahoo.co.uk
Political refugee from Thatcher's Britain (or rather Scotland) who has been on the move since 1991. First in central Europe - then from 1999 Central Asia and Caucasus. Working on EU projects - related to building capacity of local and central government. Home base is an old house in the Carpathian mountains and Sofia

about the blog

Writing in my field is done by academics - and gives little help to individuals who are struggling to survive in or change public bureaucracies. Or else it is propoganda drafted by consultants and officials trying to talk up their reforms. And most of it covers work at a national level - whereas most of the worthwhile effort is at a more local level. The restless search for the new dishonours the work we have done in the past. As Zeldin once said - "To have a new vision of the future it is first necessary to have new vision of the past".I therefore started this blog to try to make sense of the organisational endeavours I've been involved in; to see if there are any lessons which can be passed on; to restore a bit of institutional memory and social history - particularly in the endeavour of what used to be known as "social justice". My generation believed that political activity could improve things - that belief is now dead and that cynicism threatens civilisationI also read a lot and wanted to pass on the results of this to those who have neither the time or inclination -as well as my love of painting, particularly the realist 20th century schools of Bulgaria and Belgium.A final motive for the blog is more complicated - and has to do with life and family. Why are we here? What have we done with our life? What is important to us? Not just professional knowledge - but what used to be known, rather sexistically, as "wine, women and song" - for me now in the autumn of my life as wine, books and art....

quotes

“I will act as if what I do makes a difference”
William James 1890.

"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas"
JM Keynes (1935)

"We've spent half a century arguing over management methods. If there are solutions to our confusions over government, they lie in democratic not management processes"
JR Saul (1992)

"There are four sorts of worthwhile learning - learning about · oneself
· learning about things
· learning how others see us
· learning how we see others"
E. Schumacher (author of "Small is Beautiful" (1973) and Guide for the Perplexed (1977))

"The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."
Bertrand Russell, 1950

Followers

der arme Dichter (Carl Spitzweg)

my alter ego

the other site

In 2008 I set up a website in the (vain) hope of developing a dialogue around issues of public administration reform - particularly in transition countries where I have been living and working for the past 26 years. The site is www.freewebs.com/publicadminreform and contains the major papers I have written over the years about my attempts to reform various public organisations in the various roles which I've had - politician; academic/trainer; consultant.